The 405 "Best Of" Art Round Up

Artist:Sylvia J
Link:www.sylviaji.com
Born in 1982, a native of San Francisco, Sylvia Ji's artistic ability is akin to another time and place. Her work encapsulates an alluring beauty that is both cutting edge and a nod to time honored technique. Hauntingly beautiful images brimming sexual provocation mix with a sense of consternation, hinting that all is not as well as it may appear.
Some of her paintings are symbolic reflections of herself, portraits of people she kn... (continued)

Artist:Sylvia J
Link:www.sylviaji.com
Born in 1982, a native of San Francisco, Sylvia Ji's artistic ability is akin to another time and place. Her work encapsulates an alluring beauty that is both cutting edge and a nod to time honored technique. Hauntingly beautiful images brimming sexual provocation mix with a sense of consternation, hinting that all is not as well as it may appear.
Some of her paintings are symbolic reflections of herself, portraits of people she knows or just nameless faces set in a landscape of fleeting and decaying beauty.
Artist:Whitney Lenox
Link:www.myspace.com/mybrokeanecdote"
I like my horror films gory and gutsy and luckily that's just how i like my art work too.
Fashioned out of skulls,blood,spiders webs,flesh tunnels and an abundance of needle sharp tattoo's comes the feminist hardcore art work of Whitney Lenox. Gruesomeness and elegance have never looked so good. Flung together by chunks of ink embellished flesh and gothic and punk rock styles, Whitney Lenox joins the sweetly macabre elite with the likes of the Sylvia Ji's and Joshua Petker's in the same art movement. Besides being a dab hand at pencil and paint, Whitney is also an accomplished tattoo artist, which can often be seen spilling over into the creations of beautiful and decrepit porcelain skinned and busty damsels. Whitney's drawing style reminds me a lot of that teen angst cartoon show Daria and I think its fair to say that any one of Whitney's characters could beat the shit out of her!
Artist: Cai Guo Qiang
Link:www.caiguoqiang.com
The "Best of" Art Round would simply not complete without the inclusion of chinese installation artist Cai Guo Qiang. Breath taking and extremely spectacular are the best two words to describe Qiang's lavish and obtuse imagination. I mean, here's a guy who first started working with gunpowder in his drawings! My favorite piece has always been this one (as seen above) 99 life size replica wolves...(were not talking birds or rabbits here, were talking about fucking savage WOLVES)...are catapulted into the air and splattered against a glass wall with incredible force. The results make for an unfathomable arial display. No doubt, Qiang's artistic prowlice is often seen as bizarre, but what's lost in translation only brings with it an urge to ask every question raised in your thoughts - and that's how art should be.
Artist:Kevin E Taylor
Link:www.kevinearltaylor.com
Kevin E. Taylor is an artist living in San Francisco, CA. Taylorâs paintings have a symbiotic theme showing organisms, animals, and humans all coexisting. Whether parasitic or beneficial, the common thread behind his oil on wood paintings is that these strange creatures all exist together- similar to our own reality.His fascination with animals, environment, and human relations has led him to turn animals into humans in an anthropomorphic figure. The collective consciousness that makes us aware of other being in the planet is incorporated in his paintings to tell a story of life, and this thing we call death.
Taylorâs abstract narratives are dream-oriented in a playful yet dark ma-cob similar to the theme of Where the Wild Things Are. With humor, harmony, morphology, genealogy, symbiosis, and just not taking himself too seriously, Kevin Earl Taylor attempts to expose the animal within.
Artist:John Casey
Link:http://bunnywax.com
John Casey is obsessed with fictitious human morphology, which he explores in his ink drawings and small sculptures. At first glance, his works seem to portray a menagerie of deformed creatures. A collective analysis reveals this array of oddball creations to be a series of psychological studies â self-portraits of the artist's inner psyche in all of its multifaceted incarnations. Some sad, some horrific, and some whimsical, these characters evoke responses from laughter and sympathy to disgust and discomfort. While one might call Casey's work the exorcising of inner demons, his creations inspire more empathy than they do loathing. By depicting the grotesque as pitiable, John Casey illuminates the darkest corners of the mind, seeking redemption for all of us.
Stay tuned for an exclusive interview with John Casey here on The405 very soon!â¨
If you would like your art work to be featured in the next Roundup, then send a message to us at - The405arthouse@googlemail.com